Some guys get all the babes – not exactly

A common theme that circulates in the HBD/Game blogosphere is that, in the wake of the sexual revolution, an increasing number of men end up mateless, thanks to the fact that a minority of men (“alpha males”) monopolize most of the women. A commentor over at Peter Frost’s blog even attached his own made-up numbers to the phenomenon:

Jayman,

It is difficult provide information and statistics on solitary bachelors men/women and singles men/women in a long term, short term relationships, dating and mating opportunities. Percentage of unmarried and married people is not useful in this case.
If you use to read essays on gender dynamics and the sexual revolution. A characteristic feature of decadent societies is the recrudescence of primitive, precivilized cultural forms. That is what is happening to us. Sexual liberation really means the Darwinian mating pattern of the baboon pack reappears among humans, where 80% of women managed to reproduce, but only 40% of men did. The obvious conclusion from this is that a few top men had multiple wives, while the bottom 60% had no mating prospects at all. Women clearly did not mind sharing the top man with multiple other women, ultimately deciding that being one of four women sharing an ‘alpha’ was still more preferable than having the undivided attention of a ‘beta’. Let us define the top 20% of men as measured by their attractiveness to women (phenotype), as ‘alpha’ males while the middle 60% of men will be called ‘beta’ males. The bottom 20% omegas are not meaningful in this context.

[Alpha] men practice serial polygyny, through mating a lot of girls, marriage, divorce, and remarriage. For all practical purposes, the consequences of serial polygyny are exactly the same as those of simultaneous polygyny. The mathematical consequence, given a roughly 50-50 sex ratio, is that situation is depriving beta men of mating opportunities.

So I decided to take a look to see if there was any truth to this. To do this, I yet again turned to the GSS.

Getting a clear picture of this requires a multi-pronged approached. The question I sought to answer was “what proportion of men end up lonely (i.e., without a wife/girlfriend) in middle age and older?” There doesn’t seem to be a single variable in the GSS that answers this question, so attacked this question in three different ways:

The distribution of the numbers of children fathered by men

The proportion of men who are married, divorced, or never married in mid-life

The distribution of the number of female sex partners men have had

The following graphs are for non-Hispanic Whites, by cohort. To ensure that all participants were at least 40 years old at the time of the survey, I’ve gathered the data this way:

Those born earlier than 1930 from the 1972-2010 data

The 1930-1939 cohort from the 1980(2)-2010 data

The 1940-1949 cohort from the 1990(2)-2010 data

The 1950-1959 cohort from the 2000-2010 data

1960s and later from the 2008-2010 data

First, children:

Assuming that these men answered honestly and are correct about the number of children they’ve had (since men are not always certain of this number), it appears that there is and has been a very wide spread in the number of children men sire. There is a noticeable decline in the number of men having very large numbers of children, which is consistent with declining birth rates over time. The proportion of men having no children hit a noticeable low during the good times of the post-War boom. Since then, the pattern has returned to something very similar to what it was before the boom; that is, a fifth to a quarter of men leaving no descendants. This is the raw material of natural selection, but it can safely be inferred that the traits being selected for have changed a great deal since the turn of the 20th Century.

Above are marriage rates. While there has been a noticeable increase in the number of men who are divorced or never marry at all, the vast majority of White men still get married by mid-life, even of the latest cohort to hit that stage.

This is the distribution of the number of lifetime female sexual partners. While the transition from the more monogamous days of old to the free sexuality of today’s world is very evident, a couple of things need to noted. For one, the proportion of lifetime male virgins has greatly decreased from the turn of the century cohorts. This is likely because in the fairly strict society of the day, unmarried men were largely unable to get sex, and hence were relegated to a lifetime of celibacy (as was the case in Northwestern Europe for centuries). That share has since been steady at ~4% since, [Edit: the real proportion is more like 2%, since about half of those guys with no lifetime female sex partners are gay] though (as the Audacious Epigone also discovered). However, even for the generations born at the beginning of the 20th century, a third of men had four or more female sex partners in their lives, and 10% had bed more than 10 women. [Edit, 11/13/12: I’ve added the 1980s cohort and split the categories further. As we can see, a not insignificant percentage of men claim to have had sex with over 50 different women in their lives!] (Note that the GSS question asks only the number of sex partners since age 18. Since the vast majority of people these days lose their virginity before that age, it’s quite likely that this under-counts the true number somewhat.)

In any case, it’s clear that the norm has shifted from one or a few lifetime partners to many—very many, considering that among the younger generations, half of all men have had sex with 10 or more women during the course of their lives (again, assuming that these data are reliable; one can imagine that men have a penchant to inflate the number of their sexual conquests). But this comes primarily at the expense of men who have had only a single partner, not by leaving a bunch of men with no mates.

I imagine that all the “game” folks will use these data to clearly delineate the distinctions between “alpha”, “beta”, and “omega” men, particularly among the younger cohorts.

These data make clear that the notion that a few “alphas” take all the women leaving none for all other men is clearly false. However, the reality of the situation may be in fact closer to what [Edit]: commenter STF noted over at Peter Frost’sHeartiste stated awhile back:

Female economic empowerment and growing government largesse were helping to fuel the desire of women to ride the alpha cock carousel in their 20s, only to settle down with a beta provider later in life when their sexual peak had been passed.

[…]

We have scientific evidence proving a core concept that women who are materially comfortable — as many women became after their assault on the workforce and colleges beginning in the 1970s — are less likely to seek out beta providers and more likely to indulge their hypergamous drives and sex it up with handsome alpha cads; that is, until Father Time cruelly etches the first of his brandings on delicate, feminine faces. This would go a long way to explaining why age of first marriage has been steadily climbing since 1970; more years devoted to schooling to make the middle class money, yes, but also more years to slut it up with the high status alphas women truly desire but don’t need for material resource procurement.

Women who missed the big feminist bandwagon of the last 40 years and didn’t go to college or make a decent salary are the ones who pine for gentle, beta herbs to take them under their wing and provide a home, food and shopping money. So feminism has indeed been a boon for alpha males who want sex on the cheap with a harem of hypergamous concubines, and a living hell for betas who have been left out in the cold, waiting their turn for the ladies to age into their late 20s and 30s before getting a chance to drop on knee for the last ditch lock-up.

Despite his crude phrasing, these data suggest that there is an element of truth to STF’s Heartiste’s analysis.

Indeed, this is the central problem fueling the “game” movement. As Frost noted earlier, among 18-30 year-olds (i.e., mating age), there is a numerical shortage of single women (particularly the most desirable women). This leaves many men—particularly in that age group—at a distinct competitive disadvantage in the mate market. These data suggest, as I suspected, and despite all the griping in the HBD/game world, that most of these men passed over in youth nonetheless end up settled with wives by their 30 and 40s.

I know that this may be cold comfort to a frustrated young man seeing his more studly peers land all the babes, but this is the reality of the situation. Unless there was an extreme excess of women, we can’t all be Hugh Hefner.

But, on to the question we all want answered, and to address Dr. Frost’s point, who is actually breeding more, cads or dads? To answer that question, I looked at the average number of children by the number of sexual partners, as Jason Malloy and others once investigated:

This the average number of children had by number of female sex partners, by cohort, with the data collected as described above, 95% confidence intervals shown. In virtually every generation, faithful men reliably outbreed more promiscuous ones. Indeed, in more recent cohorts, the studs typically bred at sub-replacement levels. One point, despite the small sample size, the anomalous low fecundity of the most womanizing men in the oldest cohort (who wouldn’t have had access to reliable contraception) suggest that they are underreporting the number of children they fathered.

However, note that men that report only a single lifetime partner have a great fertility edge against other men. Birth control works (and I mean in a eugenicsense).

Contra the wishes of the most conservatives voices, there is no undoing this pattern. The technological changes that brought about the sexual revolution are here to stay. Indeed, youthful male frustration notwithstanding, the situation is hardly as dire as conservatives often make it out to be. Considering the premium people today place on assortative mating, it is no wonder the age of marriage is rising: it simply takes that long to find the proper mate.

These facts do suggest that, even if wealth inequality were to relent, and wages for the middle class rose, marriages rates would rise and fertility would go up, but the situation would not resemble the 1950s. Many woman (and by extension, men) would still not marry until their late 20s and 30s, and marriages, especially those who wed young, would be unstable. Such is the nature of things today.

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32 Comments

“what proportion of men end up lonely (i.e., without a wife/girlfriend) in middle age and older?”

Except this is the wrong question. What matters is getting women at their peak, not landing bitter women settling at the wall. If beta men go from getting grateful women who treat them well and give them the best years of their lives (and 2-3 children) to getting ungrateful women who treat them crappy and give them the tiniest sliver of their youth they can before having 0-2 children for them its obvious they have been downgraded.

Most positive news I’ve read all week. I’ve always thought game followers have exaggerated their problems, and here’s some nice solid proof. Maybe it’s because I live in a southern city, but I’ve never seen a guy who wasn’t a total loser that couldn’t at least land a steady girlfriend every now and then of the same level. The ones I’ve met that cannot easily get laid are either lazy or stupid. Or both. I wouldn’t want them reproducing anyways.

If anything, the divide isn’t between alphas and betas. It’s between lazy people who refuse to take care of or improve themselves and people who put effort into making themselves happy.

More young men than young women find themselves mateless, even though the sex ratio in society is always roughly 50-50 and there are about the same number of young men as young women. This is because humans are naturally polygynous (Alexander et al, 1979; Kanazawa & Still, 1999), and throughout evolutionary history some men have always had multiple
mates. The mathematical consequence of polygyny is most ¡obvious in societies that sanction and practice (simultaneous) polygynous marriage, such as many African tribes and Muslim societies in the Middle East. If every married man has four wives, for example, it means that, given a 50-50 sex ratio, three-quarters of men are left mateless. A large majority of men in such societies are in the same situation as you are; they find themselves alone on a Saturday (and every other) night. However, as Daly and Wilson (1988, pp. 140-142) point out, “polygyny is a matter of degree” in human mating systems; every human society is more or less polygynous, even in an officially monogamous society like the United States. This is both because some married (or otherwise already-mated) men acquire and keep additional mates (in the form of mistresses and girlfriends)2 and because men in such nominally monogamous societies practice serial polygyny, where divorced men go on to marry younger women in their second and subsequent marriages. One of the strongest predictors of remarriage after divorce is sex; men often remarry, women often don’t.

Now if men only practice serial polygyny and do not acquire multiple mates simultaneously, then it means that there are an equal number of available women as available men. However, given men’s preference for younger women and women’s preference for older men (Buss, 1989; Kenrick & Keefe, 1992), most of the now available women are older women who have been married and divorced and have had some children, while most of the available men are young men yet to have their reproductive opportunities (if they are lucky). They do not make good matches for each other. In polygynous societies (either simultaneous or serial), most women get their reproductive opportunities and have children (if followed by a divorce in the case of serial polygyny), while many men are left out of their reproductive opportunities altogether for life and spend their entire life mateless. The more polygynous the society, the more young men face the distinct possibility of ending their lives as complete reproductive losers. Such is the mathematics of polygyny.

The pattern that the Game bloggers describe seems rather exaggerated to me. What I see around me is lots of coupled-up pairs, but they’re not married, so it’s easier to break up. In college, this often means breaking up when one of the couple goes home for the summer; it also happens when one has to move for a job, or just because they’ve gotten tired of each others’ shit. Or when one of the couple wants more committment (move in togeher, get married) and the other isn’t willing to do it. After college, most boyfriend-girlfriend relationships last at least a year, often several years. It’s what happens in-between that’s most interesting, and that’s most visible.

Between boyfriends, some young women will be rather conservative – they’ll date one or two guys they’ve prequalified heavily, and they won’t have (PIV) sex until they’re pretty sure he’s the next boyfriend. Others will slut around for a while, either to try out men before choosing one as a boyfriend, or just to have some fun with non-boyfriend-material men before looking for a new boyfriend, or one of those hot guys turns out to actually be more interested in a long-term relationship than pump-n-dump. And of course there’s in-between – the woman who dates a few guys, and fucks a couple of them before she realizes they’re not boyfriend material.

Observers of the sexual marketplace focus on this in-between period, and ignore or gloss over the large mass of men and women in long-term monogamous relationships, which covers probably 80% or more of both sexes at any one time. A guy who is pretty alpha can stay in the active marketplace forever, finding the hotter women who aren’t coupled up, having short-term flings with them, and moving on to the next. The average guy (the AFC) spends more time on the active marketplace than the average woman does because he doesn’t approach enough, or he’s too beta and dates don’t convert to relationships, or because he overvalues himself, not realizing that women don’t measure men by the standards the average man measures himself by. The number of guys who *never* get laid is pretty low, but the number of guys in relationships with fat chicks, or nags, or really boring women, and who spend months to years involuntarily celibate between relationships is pretty high. The number of women who *can’t get laid* is a lot smaller, but what women want is generally a relationship, and there are plenty of women who can’t get a relationship with a guy as “hot” as they want.

“Observers of the sexual marketplace focus on this in-between period, and ignore or gloss over the large mass of men and women in long-term monogamous relationships, which covers probably 80% or more of both sexes at any one time. A guy who is pretty alpha can stay in the active marketplace forever, finding the hotter women who aren’t coupled up, having short-term flings with them, and moving on to the next. The average guy (the AFC) spends more time on the active marketplace than the average woman does”

yep, that actually pretty much sums it up in my opinion. The thing with gamers is that they had became obsessed with the desire to become that in-between period guy.

Randy / Nov 10 2012 11:47 AM

It would be interesting to know the collective nature of gender performance and sexual market in activities typically associated with two main contexts, like urban nightlife and online dating, in which men substantially outnumber women. These rituals were designed to reinforce contemporary courtship rituals but operate as ineffective collective strategies of mating management.
There are structures of inequality within as well as across the socially constructed gender divide between women and men. You should find an operational sex ratio, which is the number of sexually available men per 100 sexually available women, multiplied by 100. What’s the real pool of single women available and effects of gender imbalance on the mating market?

If you go to a bar or club (interaction ritual associated with approaching women), you will likely see a number of men trying to meeting women and a much smaller number of women rejecting most of those men. This is repeated, bar after bar, city after city. The women tend to choose the most attractive male solicitor in the establishment (even if the women are only of moderate attractiveness or uglies). And online dating is worthless as a way to meet quality women. There are too many indiscriminate men and too few cute girls. The dynamics are totally in the woman’s favor. Women are not seeking a physically similar partner, so they only reply messages of 5-10% highly attractive men on the website.

On bars/clubs and online dating, women increase their hypergamous standards and they prefer men of high attractiveness rather than that similar to their own. Female are not trying to pair up on assortative mating (women mate with similar phenotypes men) because the number of prospective men partners is large and costs of searching or being rejected are low. Women are in demand (and undersupplied). Women pursue alpha males until the age of 34-36 when their desirability drops precipitously and not even single beta males she used to reject are interested in them. Single men prefer an attractive and young woman (18-30 years old).

Very interesting graphs. So nice to see someone put some numbers to all the speculation…

While there has been a noticeable increase in the number of men who are divorced or never marry at all, the vast majority of White men are still get married by mid-life

That never-married jump from 4% to 12% is nothing to sneeze at. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers for the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts in the future. Lots of talk on the internet of a ‘marriage strike’ and so forth, but is it really happening? Also, I have a suspicion that black marriage rates are at historic (post-slavery) lows, but I don’t have numbers to back that up.

Women who’ve only had zero or one sex partner = 75% for the 1880s birth cohort (and I’d bet a lot of those ‘two sex partners’ people were widows who remarried), 30% for the 1970s birth cohort. And on the high end, women with ten or more sex partners went from 2% in the 1880s birth cohort to 21% in the 1970s cohort. I’ve seen studies posted in the man-o-sphere that one of the biggest predictors for a long and stable marriage is the woman’s partner count (1 = best scenario). Does this portend more broken marriages in the future?

The women’s never-married rates are striking. From 7% for the 1880s birth cohort down to 2/3% for the after-WWII generation, then back up to 9% for Generation X. As you mentioned, inside the Hajnal line there was always a lifetime celibacy rate of about 10%. Are we coming back to (or surpassing) that now?

Despite our strong urge to pair-bond, I have to wonder if the trend in the West is towards less and less marriage, for all the reasons the man-o-sphere writers bring up. Or (as you’ve posited before) that the conservatives, by reason of their fecundity, shall inherit the earth as the liberals extinct themselves, and this shall all become a moot question…

Very interesting graphs. So nice to see someone put some numbers to all the speculation…

Thanks!

That never-married jump from 4% to 12% is nothing to sneeze at. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers for the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts in the future. Lots of talk on the internet of a ‘marriage strike’ and so forth, but is it really happening?

The key question is who are those 12% that never marry? Are the men whose genes we’d want to keep? I’ll do a deeper look to find out.

Women who’ve only had zero or one sex partner = 75% for the 1880s birth cohort (and I’d bet a lot of those ‘two sex partners’ people were widows who remarried), 30% for the 1970s birth cohort. And on the high end, women with ten or more sex partners went from 2% in the 1880s birth cohort to 21% in the 1970s cohort.

I’d suspect, as per your blog post, the old-time numbers are likely somewhat under-reported, since good little ladies just didn’t do that back then. Part of the apparent increase in the reported number of sex partners probably stems from women being more honest these days. I’ve added the 1980s cohort, and the pattern of their predecessors seems well underway.

I’ve seen studies posted in the man-o-sphere that one of the biggest predictors for a long and stable marriage is the woman’s partner count (1 = best scenario). Does this portend more broken marriages in the future?

It’s probably not causal. Women who have racked up a large number of sex partners are probably those with higher sex drives and lower penchant for commitment (aka, hos). Hence, these women are more likely to have unstable marriages.

The women’s never-married rates are striking. From 7% for the 1880s birth cohort down to 2/3% for the after-WWII generation, then back up to 9% for Generation X. As you mentioned, inside the Hajnal line there was always a lifetime celibacy rate of about 10%. Are we coming back to (or surpassing) that now?

Yes, the post-War boom times are very evident here. I’m betting of the old cohorts, the never-married are the spinsters, who were relegated to celibacy and childlessness. Probably not so of today’s never-married, but, overall, the proportions have returned to something close to their historic values.
Many commentators today are concerned with that sizable divorced share. I don’t what percentage of those remained alone and never re-marry, but I’m sure it’s sizable.

Despite our strong urge to pair-bond, I have to wonder if the trend in the West is towards less and less marriage, for all the reasons the man-o-sphere writers bring up. Or (as you’ve posited before) that the conservatives, by reason of their fecundity, shall inherit the earth as the liberals extinct themselves, and this shall all become a moot question…

I’m betting we’re seeing the new normal. I don’t anticipate a huge amount of change in either direction in the near future, due both to the slow pace of genetic change (ala Greg Cochran) (which will prevent marriage rates from rising too much) and the fact that people do have an instinct to pair-bond, as you note (which will prevent them from falling too much).

Anonymous / Nov 16 2012 8:11 AM

>Indeed, youthful male frustration notwithstanding, the situation is hardly as dire as conservatives often make it out to be.

Youthful male frustration in the West leads to XBox.
Youthful male frustration in China leads to riots.

The charts are proof that the men (and maybe the women) are lying quite a lot. The reports from the men and women can’t both be true. Why?

Reason #1:
If the Heartiste blog is even 1% true, then there is a small fraction of men pleasing a lot of women while lots of betas are left frustrated. Instead, even among the youngest cohort almost all the men are successful, and much more than the women. This even though everyone knows that young men are in the worst sexual market position of their lives while young women are at the best market position of their lives.

Reason #2:
Couplings of a man who is older than the woman are much more common than the reverse. So you would expect young women to get more experience at earlier ages, and for the men to catch up later. Instead, the young men are supposedly having lots of success while the young women are lonelier.

Reason #3:

The numbers should balance somehow. For example, if there were more male players (i.e. 10 or more partners) then women should be more successful at the lower numbers.

Reason #1:
If the Heartiste blog is even 1% true, then there is a small fraction of men pleasing a lot of women while lots of betas are left frustrated. Instead, even among the youngest cohort almost all the men are successful, and much more than the women. This even though everyone knows that young men are in the worst sexual market position of their lives while young women are at the best market position of their lives.

There is little by way of hard numbers in anything that circulates in the game world. We just don’t know what the true proportions are. You might be a little charitable to the true plight of some men. A guy whose 2 reported sex partners consists of two one-time hookups where the ladies each no longer give him the time of day would probably report feeling worse off than the guy with the steady girlfriend.

A key fact to keep in mind: a vocal minority can seem to be much larger than a silent majority, and the former seems to describe much of the game world.

Reason #2:
Couplings of a man who is older than the woman are much more common than the reverse. So you would expect young women to get more experience at earlier ages, and for the men to catch up later. Instead, the young men are supposedly having lots of success while the young women are lonelier.

Reason #3:

The numbers should balance somehow. For example, if there were more male players (i.e. 10 or more partners) then women should be more successful at the lower numbers.

See above, on the “ho” effect.

Anonymous / Nov 19 2012 4:55 PM

Number of partners data is totally bogus!!!

Okay, I crunched the numbers and the lying (presumably by the men) is pure commedy. I assume for the sake of simplicity that 10 to 20 = 15; 20 to 50 = 35 and 50 to 100 = 75 partners.

Then I assumed 100 men and 100 women in the 1970-1979 cohort. For example, the purple band yields 150 partners for the two men at the top and zero for the women since no women reported these.

Adding up all the bands means that

100 men in the 70-79 cohort had 1334 partners.

100 women in the 70-79 cohort had 480 partners.

Assuming the women are telling the truth, the men are inflating their numbers by 3 x because every time a man counts a woman as partner, the woman should be counting that same man as a partner so the numbers should basically match.

The thing that confounds your analysis is that those 2 men who claim more than 50 partners in your example (say 75 each) does not necessarily add up to 150 unique women. Many of the playas who are having sex with multiple women are likely having sex with some of the same multiple women. Don’t underestimate how much the hos are contributing to the equation.

That said, we really don’t know how reliable these numbers are.

Anonymous / Nov 20 2012 1:48 PM

Right, but if those two men were each with 75 unique women, then that is 150 unique pairings reported by the men. The women should report the same thing if they also experienced these pairings (which in many cases they did not because the men made them up). Suppose that the 2 men shared all of the same women for argument. Then you have 75 women whose count is +2 because of these two men.

You see, the result should still appear in the women’s tally, where the masses of women have a few more encounters each.

Again, the tallies should roughly match if people are being remotely honest. Instead the talliest by the men and women are miles apart.

Let’s stretch your example out a bit: instead of 100 people, let’s say 10,000. The 500 guys that report sleeping with 50+ women now have anywhere between 50-38,000 women between them, depending on how many unique women between them. If we assume however that each of the women they’ve bed has been with an average of 20 guys herself, the number of women “needed” is only 1,900, well within the sample. Granted, that’s 20% of women instead of the 4% that report 20 or more partners, but hardly impossible.

Of course, these are Whites only. There’s nothing saying that these sex partners were also all White.

Every unique hetero coupling event should register a +1 for some man and some woman simultaneously.

Not necessarily, because of the ranges (10-20, 21-100) I have set up, and as aforementioned, interracial pairings.

In short, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the honesty of respondents simply from how the numbers stack up. That said, they are probably somewhat unreliable, as I admitted in the beginning.

Anonymous / Nov 20 2012 2:10 PM

Another way to think about it:

Every unique hetero coupling event should register a +1 for some man and some woman simultaneously. If people were telling the truth it is a basic truism that the collective man’s side and the collective woman’s side must increase in tandem. Thus the cumulative totals for a representative sampling of 100 men should be about equal to that for 100 representative women.

Conversely, it’s common to meet men who add
Video/Skype sex
Masturbation
Prostitution

To their own numbers.

So, in surveys, a lot of men will count “that handjob at ‘Flaherty’s”, their daily Yahoo Internet Messenger jackathon with CoolCrazeeCougar1973 or those times they received an “around-the-world” from a 19-year old coed for $300 a session. Women, OTOH, *don’t count* “that time they got fingered while grabbing a guy’s dick at Flaherty’s”, hooking up with the two “Rent-A-Dread” beachcombers in Aruba, the Japanese guy who just gave her oral, the fray boy who lasted 75 seconds when drunk and 35 seconds when sober…

Best example: in 2002, an active duty deployed soldier was busted for turning her tent into a brothel. Despite the fact that she had earned over $50,000 at $50-$100/hour per session, she told her superiors that she had been intimate with a dozen men. When dozens of men came forward with details of her operation, when she was discovered to be pregnant and over 60 guys claimed to be the father, she steadfastly maintained that the only ones who “counted” were the men who insisted on PIV intercourse. Out of (at final count) 140 men serviced, her personal count was the 12 guys who always out their penises inside of her vagina; even the men who occasionally limited themselves to non-PIV were excluded from her personal count.
Interestingly enough, her case is the primary reason for the U.S. Military’s insistence on electronic banking. Their logic: keeping large amounts of cash out of the hands of soldiers will prevent a case like this from happening again.

Nice to see this reworked from a different angle. The data simply do not back up the Game narrative that guys like Heartiste push. I’ve felt like a lone voice in the wilderness pointing this out for several years now (along with notable exceptions Jason Malloy and Agnostic). The pattern doesn’t just hold among whites–men and women alike–either, it’s there among blacks and Hispanics as well.

Thanks. Indeed, this appears to be the pattern. But there is a major caveat: we don’t know how reliable these numbers are, since they depend on self-reporting of respondents. One would imagine that for the major womanizing men, they are often clueless of the true number of children they have. We’d expect this problem to be particularly acute in the pre-birth control era.

This absolutely needed to be done. Great work. You and dalrock are bringing empiricism to the whatever-we-are-calling-it-these-days-sphere, and god bless it.

Any chance you could make your source spreadsheet available? I’d love to play around with those numbers by seeing what assumption for male partner count inflation and female partner count deflation results in parity – because just by eyeballing the two charts, it looks like it wouldn’t take much to have them meet almost completely in the middle.

Jayman, mate market value (MMV) or fitness is not correlated to fertility. It isn’t how the modern mating system work. The validity of your evolutionary explanations when you are trying to find statistics on number of children is preposterous. Due to modern birth control methods, these data are bullshit, and mating success is often used as a unuseful rate proxy. You can not predict fitness and mating success; Number of children by man is only evolutionarily relevant in population of hunter-gatherers. While real fitness is not related to reproductive outcomes, fertility does not predict mating succes or mate market value. Therefore your association between reproductive success in modern men is not mediated by differential access to fecund women. It does not reveal his success rate in mating market. It does not reveal his success rate, it reveals only the number to offspring by man. So we still don’t know what his mating success is, we don’t know how many women he can get, his approach/success ratio. All this is only related to mate market value, e.g. social and sexual desirability and attractiveness).

I´m going to illustrate my argument with an example:

mate market value: 9.25 (hight attractiveness as potencial partner)
approach / success ratio: 68%
number of mates: 27 women in short term relationships and casual sex . With 12 female in the top 10% of quality mates (i..e attractive girls in the 7-10 MMV range).
number of offspring: 0

> Indeed, youthful male frustration notwithstanding, the situation is hardly as dire as conservatives often make it out to be. Considering the premium people today place on assortative mating, it is no wonder the age of marriage is rising: it simply takes that long to find the proper mate.

do you even believe this yourself? there is just so much wrong in this paragraph, i dont even know where to begin. just reread it a few times, and you should be able to find atleast one or two flaws in that logic.

this is a post about male mating patterns, right? do cads have a lower iq than dads? i dont see how you could bring that sentence after the graphs you posted. anyway, the male iq is not correlated with the # of offspring. the female iq on the other hand…

The bottom line as a single 39 year old male who blew some good chances with some with nice girls in the past. I know karma is a bitch and now i’m paying for it. The bottom line is to not let a cute girl that you get along with and have great chemistry with slip away when you’re young especially if you’re not the best looking guy. Take advantage of your youth! by 30-35 you got to have been married or have a LTR. Now at my age the young girls barely look at me. I only get looks from 40+ women.

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